Vidi-yo~! Another round-up of developments in the land of moving pixels.
Web Video
Hard not to notice Google’s purr-chase of youtube recently, a landmark event for online video and notable more for the value it places on social networks and user generated media, than the price ( $US1.6billion of google stock, not cash, mere grains from the google shores ). As Susan Mernit noted Google could’ve bought the New York Times for the same price, but as media shifts online, conversations and networks, collective tastes and filtering are becoming more valued than the old one-to-many approach of traditional media. Whether Gootube can simultaneously please both the copyright holders and the network of users, remains to be seen, there being plenty of other online video infrastructure to play within if Gootube gets too restrictive or advertorial.
Something missing in many of the online debates about the Gootube merger is that around half of the network’s most viewed clips are created by users ( as pointed out by a series of ‘YouTube trends reports‘ ). That’s significant. The most viewed clip is of course, the ‘Evolution of dance’ an extensive swiping of pop culture’s most memorable dance moves. Virginia Heffernan of the NYtimes reckons part of this clip’s popularity is do with it’s lack of language, allowing it to transcend national boundaries. And why should youtube get all of the advertising from that clip’s 34 million views? Revver.com is one alternative to that, providing a slice of ad-revenue to the creators. In the end though, whether people jump ship to another video host or not, youtube will awlays be remembered as the most significant key trigger for shifting people to publishing video online.
‘The Amazing YouTube Tools Collection’ hosts a huge range of various scripts, code, tools for integrating youtube into your site or blog, or enhanced searching, gathering and auto-downloading of clips.
Converting those flash video (.flv) files from youtube / google video etc… into editable quicktime clips is best done on mac with the free www.isquint.org software, or www.rivavx.com on PC ( free 30 day trial, but undoubtedly free alternatives exist).
Neave.tv is worth a look for an amazing interface to present clips from Google Video, YouTube and Blip.tv.
Coming soon : www.tapeitofftheinternet.com :: TIOTI combines great design, TV-torrent tracking, favorites, recommendations, RSS feeds, tagging, groups, wiki’s, and a lot more ‘Web 2.0′ stuff.
Video Peoples
http://aliveinbaghdad.org : A videoblog of Iraqi news which shows in highly personal manner the effects of the war and the daily reality of kidnappings suffered amongst the community.
Matt Hanson, who founded One Dot Zero in the UK, and is currently helping develop the collaborative feature film ‘Swarm of Angels’ , has had a book out for a few months which I’ve just noticed : Reinventing Music Video : Next-generation Directors: Their Work and Inspiration. Looks promising.
Viral Videos
www.p2p-art.com : “Filter” – A 73 minute experimental film made by Anders Weberg, and available only on the peer to peer file-sharing networks. “This film and all the files used creating it was deleted 2006/09/15. The original artwork is first shared by the artist until one other user has downloaded it. After that the artwork will be available for as long as other users share it.”
Fast Film : an astonishing hybrid of paper origami and relentless cinema collage, has finally become viewable online.
“guitaaaar sooolo shreddingshreddingshreddingshredding” will make more sense after watching the Incredible Mouth Band.
Software
Firefox extension forone click downloading of youtube, google videos etc.
perian.org – free software that enables quicktime based applications to play .flv files within them…
Flash based VJ app – http://www.onyx-vj.com/
Democracy Player – mac & pc software for subscribe to video channels, download bit torrent videos, and watch .flv files all in the one cool player.
Hardware
http://red.com – Launch date for the hyped video camera draws nearer, 12 Megapixels, 60 frames per second, 35mm lens, lots of other crazy specs, costing $US17,500 instead of a few hundred thousand. Inevitable, and somehow not as exciting as the lo-fi genius of using a Nintendo DS as a VJ Controller : Home-brew coders in Europe have hooked up VVVV software to their Nintendo DS, using it’s Wi-Fi capacity to enable remote VJ control action~!